This disclosure relates generally to online systems, and in particular to guaranteed delivery of content, such as videos, by online systems.
Certain online systems, such as social networking systems, allow their users to connect to and to communicate with other online system users. Users may create profiles on such an online system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Because of the increasing popularity of these types of online systems and the increasing amount of user-specific information maintained by such online systems, an online system provides an ideal forum for third party systems to increase awareness about products or services to online system users. For example, the online system can present content items, e.g., videos, received from a third party system to users of the online system.
However, it is difficult for a third party system or the online system to predict the number of online system users that will actually view a video to be presented by the online system, because an online system user who receives access to a video does not necessary view the video. Also, even if a threshold number of video views have been presented, it is different for the online system to ensure that the number of online systems users viewing the video will not change significantly afterwards.